Cultural citizenship: definition and empirical applicability
On March 6, 2023, the ILSIR seminar was devoted to the discussion of the concept of "cultural citizenship". The report on their research was presented by the laboratory staff - Senior Research Fellow Tatiana Vlasova and Research Assistant Danila Ivanov. The debater was Maria Kozlova, Chief Research Fellow of the ILSIR.
The concept of "cultural citizenship" was formed as a result of the simultaneous development of two trends: the globalization of cultural processes and the growing interest in local organizations. The evolution of the interpretation of the concept of "cultural citizenship" has changed significantly since the early 1990s, when researchers in Russia and abroad began to use it. At the theoretical level, the concept of cultural citizenship allowed us to develop an established dichotomy of exclusion and inclusion. The political perspective of the problem of cultural citizenship is associated with further understanding of the contradictions between obtaining political citizenship of a certain country and the ability to represent one's own culture, different from the dominant one. At the practical level, the "building up" of cultural citizenship can be assessed based on the criteria of cultural institutions presented to individuals for inclusion in their activities.
The research was carried out within the framework of the grant project "Cultural citizenship and local solidarity: the experience of Social inclusion of the audience of Russian Museums" (the project is supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation, № 22-78-10098). In the logic of the project dedicated to small museums, the concept of cultural citizenship is applied to the analysis of the process of developing common communication codes at the organizational and grassroots levels.
During the discussion, the political and cultural aspects of the modern civil status were discussed, combining global trends and awareness of the potential of cultural diversity. The methods and approaches of applying the concept of cultural citizenship to empirical research of museums and other institutions in the field of culture were proposed.
The debater Maria Kozlova noted the high potential of applying the theoretical framework of cultural citizenship, in particular, in application to migration and ethnic groups. The limits of applicability of the concept to other social categories remain a controversial issue.
The video of the seminar is available on the YouTube-channel of our Laboratory.
